A City Imagined: Belfast Soulscapes

by Gerald Dawe

A City Imagined  is a paean to the city of Belfast and its writers. Written in his highly regarded wry and lyrical style, Dawe’s memoir sketches the outlines of his life as he starts to understand the city in which he was born, before embracing some of the local writers whose early work had such an influential part in nudging him in the direction of writing— poets, in the main, whose first books were read with the enthusiasm of a young man beguiled by the language and music of poetry. Building on the critical acclaim of  In Another Van Morrison & Belfast  and  Looking Through You,  this third and final volume of the Northern Chronicles trilogy completes a fascinating and rich portrait of the celebrated poet’s tangled and ever-evolving relationship with his native city.

130 pages, Hardcover

Published September 14, 2021

Reviews

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dawes is a poet so he tells the story of his city partly through poetry. He wants readers to know what Belfast was like in his youth before the Troubles and how many of his contemporaries couldn’t fathom what was happening to their city as they left for other places to study or live permanently.

[Violet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly enjoyable. I loved reading about Belfast pre-Troubles, something I have not read a lot about, and the many literary figures who wrote about it, which Dawe quotes and explains in a way I found really engaging. It was well written and gave me many ideas of books to read, while finding a few I knew of (Ciaran Carson) was delightful.